


Growing Up Troll

by isoscelesfish, MeikoKuran999



Series: A New Life [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannibalism, Grubs, Hivemind education, M/M, Mild Gore, Pale Promiscuity, Pale-Black Vacillation, Species Dysphoria, Species Swap, Troll John, quadrants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 08:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4740389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoscelesfish/pseuds/isoscelesfish, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeikoKuran999/pseuds/MeikoKuran999
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This wasn't supposed to happen. Vriska was alive. His friends were safe, and John desperately wanted to see them all before the final battle, but the glitch was pulling him back. He struggled, focusing his thoughts, but it wouldn't let him go. Air rushed from his lungs as he crashed through walls of code. He couldn't control it. Something was pulling him backward, and he was breaking, stretching until his thoughts began to blur, wiped from his mind with the swipe of a cosmic eraser. Time slowed. Colors faded. Pain tore through every fiber of his existence, and somewhere, finally, a tether snapped. When John opened his eyes, all he had was a name and vague flashes of memory. </p><p>This is a story about a troll who struggles to find his place in a world where he doesn't belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Up Troll

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A New Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4366655) by [MeikoKuran999](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeikoKuran999/pseuds/MeikoKuran999). 



> Isofish: This is a reboot of MeikoKuran's original fic. It includes content and ideas from the original narrative, but we've reworked the entire outline, and are now writing it together. Warnings and pairings to be updated as needed, but John/Eridan is the primary flushed pairing in this installment.
> 
>  **Chapter Warnings** : mild grub-gore, cannibalism, hivemind indoctrination, genderless grubs. (Please see end for notes about pronoun usage.)

The world blurred, friendly faces smearing, cheerful conversations ending in a shrill elongated scratch. This wasn't supposed to happen. Vriska was alive. His friends were safe, and John desperately wanted to see them all before the final battle, but the glitch was pulling him back. He struggled, focusing his thoughts, but no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn't let him go.

Air rushed from his lungs as he crashed through the barriers of time and space, filtering through cracks in the game's equation. He couldn't control it. Every molecule in his body was shaking, vibrating against the fabric of reality―too fast, too strong. Something was pulling him backward, and he was breaking, stretching until his thoughts began to blur, wiped from his mind with the swipe of a cosmic eraser. Time slowed. Colors faded. Pain tore through every fiber of his existence, and somewhere, finally, a tether snapped.

John blinked, opening his eyes to darkness. He was curled, suspended in a space that seemed almost weightless. His mind flexed weakly, wading through a cloud of disintegrated memories. There was something there...something he should remember, but his brain refused to focus. He tried to stretch his body, and the back of his skull pressed up against a curved ceiling. His legs twitched, and John realized they were pinned against his chest, curled and immobile. For a moment, the confinement felt safe, almost comfortable, but there wasn't enough space. His back was stiff, and there was an aching pressure on the crown of his head.

Now? Something in his chest fluttered, pulsing to an unfamiliar rhythm, drumming in time with a soft clicking murmur. It was too soon, but he had to. He couldn't wait. John heaved, pushing his head up and pressing his back against the confining wall. It seemed to shrink around him, clinging to every curve of his body. He had to breathe, had to eat, had to―CRACK!

The wall split, and John arched upward, gasping in lungfuls of humid air. It was amazing, warm and rich against his damp skin. With a shake of his head, he freed himself from a layer of membrane, overbalanced, and rolled forward, crushing his former prison. He coughed, and the sound grated on his ears like a stifled cicada, high and shrill. John lay there for a moment, listening as a chorus of answering chirps and trills echoed around him, his soft stomach pressed against cold slime and stone. He wasn't alone, then.

Bracing his legs against the rock, John pushed himself up...and okay, that brought him about four inches off the ground. Shouldn't he be taller? John took a few tentative steps, confirming his suspicions. One, two, three, four, five, six―six!? Yeah, that was way too many legs. How many was he supposed to have? Where were his arms? Was he supposed to have arms?

Wracking his brain, he caught a few disjointed images―a heavy rectangular box, strange appendages reaching from the depths of a frosted confection, a scarred flickering grin―but every flash of memory pierced his aching think pan―brain?―with shards of broken glass. He made another pitiful noise, and two of his legs gave out, crumpling beneath him as he toppled sideways and rolled down the slight incline. With a pronounced squeak, he came to a stop, landing in a bed of something soft and springy. Moss? Mossss. Oh hell, yes. John swallowed two mouthfuls before he could second guess the impulse, and it tasted...weird. Really weird. Like a putrid combination of spoiled broccoli, worms, and over-ripe tomatoes, but it settled nicely in his stomach, and after a few more mouthfuls, he felt pleasantly satisfied.

Stretching up on his stupid spindly fronds, John squinted out into the black cavern. At least, he thought it was a cavern. Little clicks and squeals still echoed off the high ceiling, and steady drops of water were falling somewhere to his left. His body felt stiff, and it still wasn't moving the way he thought it should. John clicked in irritation, testing various nerve signals and finding each muscle spasm more dissatisfying than the last. He could wiggle back and forth, curl forward, and lift his head. That couldn't be it. He was supposed to be able to...to...

The thought died in a fresh stab of pain. Gritting jagged teeth, he scuttled up out of the moss, allowing his legs to run on autopilot until he got a feel for the strange rhythm. There was nothing he could do about the feeling of disassociation, but a drink of water might soothe the pain between his eyes.

He turned left, picking his way over scattered rocks and old shells, but before he reached the source of the dripping, a blood-curdling shriek echoed from somewhere behind him. The sound skittered up the segments of his back, shooting through his center as his blood pusher thrummed in terror. A few pitiful clicks, and then a low thump.

John's whole body seemed to pulsate as rapid breaths filled his tiny air sacks. There was something in here―something terrible, and he had to move. He had to move now―now! Scurrying forward, he clambered over every obstacle, occasionally colliding with other hissing, clicking creatures. It was too dark. If he could just see where he was going, he might be able to hide, but he could barely see the outline of his own nubs as they splashed through a shallow pool of water. John shivered, not liking how the liquid chilled his stomach.

The air buzzed around him, alive with electricity and fear. He could see his breath, feel it stir the energy in familiar puffs. John inhaled deeply, and a warm draft tickled his skin. He paused, head cocked, listening to the flutter of whispering currents. This, at last, was something familiar. After all that useless muscle memory, finally something clicked into place.

Wind stirred, swirling around John's fronds and tracing a path of currents like the threads of a spider's web. It was everywhere, and every bend in the subtle flow offered new bursts of information. A low sigh drained the tension from his thorax. He couldn't see in a traditional sense, but he could trace the outlines of pillars, sense the vast height of the open cavern. There were creatures nearby, some big, others small, wriggling around in beds of moss or bumping each other with little sets of horns. At least that explained the excess weight on his own cranium, and he briefly petitioned the breeze to examine the peculiar appendages―small horns for a small body, sweeping forward in a fluid line on either side of his face.

John puzzled over the shape―foreign, and yet oddly familiar. Trolls. Alternia. A galactic empire. The words buzzed in the back of his mind, and met with no resistance, meshing with a shadowed haze of shared memory. Before he could worry about that puzzling addition to his think pan, John's introspection was rudely interrupted. A larger grub had splashed after him, clicking and growling as it pressed against his side with two pointed arrowheads. It actually kind of hurt, and when the grub opened it's mouth, a jolt of instinct told him it planned to inflict genuine harm.

Answering the growl, John bared his teeth and lashed out with a gust of wind that smacked the angry creature twenty feet back up the nesting mound. Feeling guilty, but satisfied with his rebuttal, John made sure his attacker wasn't injured, and resumed testing his awesome wind powers. The currents felt almost like an extension of his own body, replacing the arms he'd been missing. Fears all but forgotten, he conjured a few more bursts of air, enjoying the familiar rush of wind around his body. He made a game of it, skidding across the surface of the pool, and clicking with amusement as he tried to hover at a more familiar height.

Before long, another swiftly stifled shriek echoed off the stone walls, curbing John's elation and bringing him down onto a large rock. It was easy to see from the elevated height, and with some surprise, John found he could actually see shadows moving in the darkness. Some ten yards back the way he'd come, an armored creature stood holding a canvas satchel and a long, pronged spear that looked kind of like a...a culling fork. The term surfaced at the back of John's mind, and his stomach twisted with dread. But...these were baby trolls. They'd barely hatched, and that thing was killing them? Blood drummed in his ears as the wind charted every motion. The fork extended, piercing a motionless body, and lifting it to the sack.

John's blood pusher sank. There was nothing alive in that bag. It was still, breathless as the stone beneath his feet. Once he knew what to look for, he saw the others, still forms scattered amongst the living wigglers like little pillows. This was normal. He knew that only the strong were fit to survive, but seeing it like this...John shook his head, struggling to keep his air sacks moving as he watched the creature amble forward, scanning its feet for the weak, infirm, and deceased.

The creature was almost at the edge of the pool when the fork lifted, targeting a dark little grub stuck on its back between two water-soaked stones. The grub wiggled and clicked, struggling to free itself, but its fleshy stomach remained pitifully exposed. John chirped in alarm, panic flaring in his thorax as he registered the flutter of facial fins, the damp rocks, and the dark angle of the splash. Oh god. That was his splash―his fault. The grub must have been in the pool while he was messing around, and now it was going to die.

It was going to die. John didn't stop to think. Gusts of wind stirred around him, twisting around his body as he flew between the monster and its mark, landing atop the sea grub and growling through the roar of a miniature storm. The culling fork paused, the monster struggling to comprehend the force blocking its prey. Lifeless drone eyes found the interfering wiggler, and it stopped, confused and apparently hesitant. John pressed his advantage, pushing it back with the force of a gale. Rocks slipped into the stream, crashing against its armor like low velocity bullets, knocking it off balance. Before it could fall, John summoned every ounce of power he had, and socked the drone with a gale-force blast, watching it sail over the nesting mound and smash into the opposing wall.

The wind died, fading to a light breeze as John huffed with exertion. A chatter of clicks and glubs erupted beneath him. Oh right, he had a wiggler trapped under his fronds. It was staring up at him with a cautious but determined expression, not quite growling, but not exactly welcoming either. It was larger than John, but had the same nubby fronds and plush underbelly. The creature wiggled, and with a little thrill, John realized he could see the yellow and orange of its jagged horns, the tuft of purple in its unruly black hair, and the violet shade of its stomach.

Ignoring the angry chatter, John chirped an apology, nuzzling the wiggler's cheek before scrambling down off the rock. With a combined effort of pushing and wiggling, John managed to flip his little buddy to freedom. The baby troll rolled onto its fronds, shaking itself before glancing nervously around the area, and backing toward the water. John gave a reassuring chirp, and the purple grub started, turning its gaze on him with wary indignation. With a faltering smile, John tried to apologize, but his words came out in a staccato mess of hissing clicks. He knew how to phrase what he wanted to say, and the words were right there on the tip of his tongue, but his mouth was too small, his teeth were too sharp, and he kept losing his breath between syllables.

The sea-grub lowered itself in the water, staring at John like he was on display at a particularly gruesome freak show. Yeah...words were definitely not working. That left physical cues and a limited spectrum of vocalizations. John paused, watching two grubs farther down the pond push and wrestle with each other. The exchange looked almost playful until the teal grub locked its jaws on its adversary's side. Brown liquid oozed from the wound, and with a jolt of revulsion, John saw the teal grub swallow a chunk of flesh.

They were...they were eating each other? John's breath hitched, his eyes snapping from grub to grub. So many dead...no wonder they had to send in cleaning drones. His abdomen hit the wall before he even realized he was moving, wind ruffling his hair as he studied the activity around him. They weren't all violent. Here and there, he saw grubs playing or nuzzling, but even that seemed shallow and uncaring in the face of so much carnage. He didn't belong here. He didn't want to be here. John's vision blurred, his lip quivered, and suddenly the world was tinted blue.  
  
Something nudged John's left side. He jumped, flying three feet into the air before realizing it was the purple grub. The grub he'd put in danger. The grub he'd saved. It was staring up at him with that same haughty expression, but it seemed a little more confident now. It even gave a few impatient clicks as it watched the breeze lower him to the ground. Once his feet were firmly planted, John made a small hesitant chirp, searching violet eyes for some hint of anything other than violence. He didn't want to fight or kill anyone, let alone newly hatched wigglers. With his windy-powers, it wouldn't be too hard to keep out of things, but that would leave him alone...alone in a dark cavern with nothing but the screams of the dying to keep him company.  
  
John stood there, blood pusher racing as he continued to study the larger grub's face. Finally, after what seemed like hours of tense silence, it made a resigned sort of click and exhaled in a long rattle, giving John's cheek a half-hearted nuzzle before pressing firmly against his side. This wasn't anything like the sharp prod he'd felt earlier from the arrow-head―more of a steady, guiding pressure. John took a step to the side. The other followed, nudging him lightly. Feeling silly, but strangely pleased, John allowed himself to be herded away from the water and toward...oh, hey, the broccoli moss.  
  
Now that he could see, it was almost obvious. For the most part, the hatchery was arranged by size, and probably age. An assortment of eggs, broken and unbroken, lay in the very center of the cavern, while the smallest grubs were clustered in the ring of moss that grew around the far edge. In the middle were the dead, the hostile, and a those in transit. It made sense in a strictly survival-of-the-fittest mentality. To prove itself worthy of life, a newly hatched wiggler had to survive the blind journey across the middle ring. John had made it easily enough, but a particularly slow or disabled grub would never make it.  
  
The purple wiggler made a sharp click, drawing his attention back to the task at hand. Eat. Grow. The command was implied through gesture and implication just as much as vocal direction, and John felt no urge to disagree. He was pretty hungry, and even though the moss tasted like fermented cabbage, he'd strip the place bare if the only alternative was ruthless cannibalism. His guide yawned, curling up to rest while John ate. Across the cavern, the drone slowly rose to its feet, and when it turned, lumbering off in a different direction, John knew they'd been reprieved. Lowering his head, he ripped up a mouthful of moss, determined to do whatever it took to leave this awful place.  
  
_Eat. Grow. Leave this place._  
  
The words cycled through his mind like a mantra, urging him on despite his rapidly filling stomach. Now and then, the sea grub would lift its head or growl to warn off interlopers, but for the most part, it either feigned sleep or sprawled on the moss like a haughty little overlord. The display should have been hilarious, given his friend's earlier predicament, but it really did seem to keep others away. A few had tried to approach, but each fled at the slightest vocalization, and eventually they stopped trying. John spotted the little arrow-head in the throng of bluebloods, and was dismayed to see it was missing several teeth.

As he began demolishing his fourth patch of moss, John's mind began to wander. It started with the interlopers, who were almost exclusively blue or green. Then, there was the middle ring. John tried to ignore the violence, but he couldn't block out the sounds, and his body was pretty much hardwired to focus on potential danger. Anyway, he saw enough deaths to notice that the surviving grubs were overwhelmingly blue. There were a few greens, a fair number of teals, and some larger brown grubs, but John still wished his own body wasn't such a garish shade of azure. There were so many peaceful grubs in the moss, little reds and browns piling on top of one another in groups of two or three, but they always moved when he got too close, and he knew it had nothing to do with the purple grub's protection. At that thought, something fizzled in the back of John's pan, and a familiar ache pulsed between his eyes.

Oh right...the hemospectrum. The term seemed vaguely familiar, but not at a personal level. At least that explained the his new friend's behavior. The little fish wiggler was practically royal. John didn't feel any need to bow, but he spent a good twenty minutes composing snarky nicknames. Somewhere between "Prince Zig-Zag Mc.Violet-Butt' and 'The Artist Formerly Known as Highblood,' John broke into a wide, squeaky yawn, eyelids drooping as his body swayed. A series of chirps directed his attention back to the royal lounge. The little violetblood jerked its horns, and John trilled sleepily in response, forcing his fronds to move until he collapsed next to the throne. He barely felt the grub shift, wrapping its body around him in a protective curl as he drifted off to sleep.

Time doesn't mean much when your only obligations involve bodily functions and the miracle of digestion. It was such a simple existence, and as time passed John ran out of unpleasant vegetable comparisons for the slimy plant fiber. He ate and slept, ate and slept, and gradually began to grow. It wasn't noticeable at first, but soon the interlopers stopped trying to catch him off guard and started trying to recruit him for their stupid grub hunts. The arrow-head was particularly persistent, and seemed to take John's reluctance as a personal offense. Scraps of rusty entrails kept appearing at the edge of his territory, and he knew the little monster was responsible―like surely he'd be unable to resist the allure of dead wiggler. John left it there, sickened by the gesture and thankfully able to resist.

Apart from eating and sleeping, he developed a fondness for wrestling and continued thinking up ridiculous names for his friend. 'Royal Jelly Belly,' was his favorite so far, because as much as he liked some of the names, John had no way of knowing if the grub was male or female. That mattered less than he thought it should, and John spent an immeasurable chunk of time trying to reconcile his views on the subject.

John was male. That was one thing he could say with complete and absolute certainty, but his interpretation of masculinity didn't match up with the fuzzy lectures that kept worming their way into his pan. He started to resent the little bursts of knowledge and the inevitable flash of pain that followed.

'Schoolfeeding' felt an awful lot like indoctrination, and he didn't agree with most of the communal ideals. Technically, John shouldn't know his gender. He shouldn't know much of anything at this stage in life, but the informational prompts were triggered by certain thoughts or questions, and he had an unusually active pan for a wiggler. In fact, until pupation, most troll larvae were barely considered sentient. John thought that was stupid; a troll was a troll, no matter what stage of development.

Gender assignment was something that would apparently happen during pupation, and if he was self-aware enough, he should be able to choose whichever option he preferred. That would be fine, since he was already decided, but the schoolfeed consistently made him feel like he was choosing wrong. The empress was female; the most famous intergalactic generals were female; even the mother grub was female. Gender wasn't as vital as the hemospectrum, but it certainly made a difference, and he was dead set on choosing 'wrong.'

Feeling mildly rebellious, John began ignoring the feeds entirely, which earned him a really shitty cycle of terrible migraines. Predictably, his mood deteriorated, and John actually snapped at R.J.B. a few times before managing to control himself. The larger grub retaliated by flopping on top of the little azure, squashing him against the cavern floor. John clicked and wiggled his fronds in protest, but he didn't really mind. He was just glad to have someone other than that creepy arrow-head.

 

Moss, moss, and more moss. John was so freaking tired of moss. Every time he felt that empty ache in his stomach, he wanted to smash his head against the wall. Now it finally made sense why 'Admiral Violet von Ziggerhorn' (John was pretty happy with that one) rarely ate more than one or two patches during awake-time. Instead, he or potentially she alternated between dozing in the moss and swimming in the pool, sometimes returning with small insects or crustaceans, which John begged for shamelessly.

He tried to follow the admiral a few times, but he couldn't dive. His fat little body floated awkwardly on the surface, leaving his stubby fronds to paddle frantically below. After a few minutes of getting nowhere, John gave up and summoned a gust of wind. That apparently spooked every critter in the water, and he endured an irritated tirade of hiss-clicking and another brief stint as a body-cushion.

With each passing sleep-cycle, John felt a little bigger and a lot more done with this place. Death brawls? So what? Fork-touting drones? Who cares? John went where he wanted when he wanted, and if he was doomed to be aggressive, he might as well aggress some empathy in these losers. He never fought seriously with any of the challengers, but he stopped worrying about hurting them when he blasted them across the cavern. Grubs were tough, and they kept interrupting his quest for edible insects and oh my gog that stupid arrow-head again. No matter how far he launched that little asshole, it just came cantering back like an infant cavalry horse. He knew it just wanted to wrestle, but it was freakishly strong and he didn't feel like being slathered in grub sweat.

Opting for a new angle, John propelled himself into the air and zipped across the cavern, sweeping a few newly hatched wigglers out of harm's way as he flew. The lucky bastards hit the moss, and John touched down just in time to deal with the inevitable pan-splitting reprimand.  
  
_*gasp* EGBERT! How dare you save those worthless grub snacks!_ _One of those little rejects had four horns―four! How utterly scandalous!_ He liked to imagine the schoolfeed as a plump little jadeblood with spiral curls and horns like classroom pointers. It couldn't actually talk, but personifying his headaches made them easier to manage.

John watched the little reject grubs grope around blindly, wishing there was more he could do for them, but if he adopted every helpless wiggler, he'd never leave this place, and Ziggerhorn was beyond ready to go. The violet grub had become a chubby little ball of abject laziness, and John was starting to worry about mobility issues. He was doing most of the guarding now, keeping watch while his friend drifted in and out of sleep.

It was time. John knew it was time, and he was flying around saving random wigglers instead of facing the inevitable. He wasn't ready. No matter how careful a grub was, pupation was a long dangerous process, and there was always a chance it might lose that battle. John wasn't ready to say goodbye. He wasn't ready to be alone. Giving the four-pronged grub a vague nuzzle, he ignored its pathetic squeak and nudged it toward a broken boulder, sharply ordering it to stay out of sight. If the yellowblood was still alive when he got back, maybe he'd help.

 

The chrysalis chamber was an eerie, silent room, hung with the remnants of broken cocoons and unbroken tombs. John didn't think about it. He didn't think about how much the room looked like a spider's nest. He didn't think when the violet grub picked a bare stalagmite and began to spin itself to sleep. He didn't want to think at all, and consequently, he waited too long.

John wasn't sure how much time he spent staring at the admiral's cocoon, but when he forced himself to go back, the little duplex was gone. A spattering of rust and olive stained the bare patch of moss where he'd left the grubs. There was no yellow in that stain, but John didn't really care.

He broke the drone, slammed it against the rocks so hard it's chitinous armor split, and then lifted it in a raging cyclone until it shattered against the ceiling and came down in pieces. Five sleep cycles later, a jadeblood came to collect the pieces. She was tall and graceful, picking her way across the rainbow floor without stepping on a single wiggler, and her voice echoed off the high cavern walls as she spoke into her wrist, smooth vocalizations overlaying a complicated rhythm of buzzes and clicks. John felt a nudge at the back of his mind, and for once, he welcomed the schoolfeed. He began learning the Alternian language.

"...don't think that's likely. She hasn't been up since she laid the last clutch, and they've almost all hatched now. I honestly don't know what could have―no, the fuchsia's still here..." A murmuring hiss from the communicator. "Are you sure that's wise?" The adult troll asked, slowly making her way up to the unhatched eggs. "Oh...well I suppose we have no choice, then. Yeah, I don't know what destroyed the drone. Unbound lusii have made their way down here before, but I doubt they'd leave the grubs alive."  
  
She bent down, scooping up a dark pink egg, and holding it gingerly as she began to descend. She laughed. "A psionic? Don't be absurd...a wiggler wouldn't know what to do with that much power. Honestly, I'm more concerned about the empty memory bank. Who do you think she's going to blame when she finds out someone wiped our server?"  
  
The drone had a viewport. Oh, shit.  
  
John shuddered. Had someone been watching the cave? Obviously...otherwise, why bother wiping the server? He thought back to all the things he'd done, the grubs he'd saved, the fights he'd ignored. The drone had seen everything. What would happen if someone found out?  
  
_I tried to warn you, Egbert._ The schoolfeed obliged his question with a stream of horrific images. Traitors, mutants, deviants, blasphemers of the social dogma, all cut down and incinerated, locked away in eternal torment, or doomed to public execution. _You wouldn't listen, and now they're going to kill you._  
  
No. John pressed himself against the rocks, hiding as the woman's voice began to fade. She passed his hiding spot without so much as a glance in his direction, and he could hear the swoosh of her skirt as it brushed the heads of clueless wigglers. "Obviously, but we have to be sure. Look, I don't want to disturb the pupae. We'll continue this discussion once I'm back in the observatory."  
  
They didn't know. They couldn't, but someone did. His pan itched with vague memories of computers and data storage. The feed didn't help much. It only gave him the most basic, watered down overview about how computers were meant to facilitate self-enrichment after the schoolfeed expired. Technical knowledge wasn't included in the general curriculum, but somehow the tutorial felt completely inadequate. He had a vague idea what a server was, and he couldn't imagine who would bother tampering with one to save his life.

A new drone was deployed three sleep-cycles later, and John stopped acting like a six-legged vigilante. It was too dangerous. He still managed to avoid the death brawls, but he endured several over-lubricated grappling matches with Arrow-head, because he couldn't risk launching the stupid dork. He never found the little yellowblood, alive or dead, and really...it was just as well.

John's appetite was waning, and his skin seemed three sizes too small. He was bloated and cranky, and all these stupid wigglers were seriously trying his patience. He caught himself snapping and growling at intruders, and it was all he could do to avoid biting their little heads off. He was so tired.  
  
Arrowhead stopped visiting, and John knew where the blue grub must be, knew he'd have to follow soon. He wasn't exactly afraid. The schoolfeed was pretty supportive, and he allowed it to lecture him if only for the company and the respite from pan-splitting pain. He missed the violet grub, wondered if it had already finished, and that was all the excuse he needed.

The moment he stepped into the silken chamber, he knew he wasn't going to leave. John felt fatally exhausted, but the energy stored under his skin drove him forward, pushing him past the point of no return. His friend was still there, hanging from the same stalagmite in a puffy lavender ball.

John sat there a moment, imagining he could see the little orange horns through the shell. Then, with a long breath, he curled up beside the cocoon and let his mind go blank, barely aware as instinct drove his fat little body to spin long strands of thread, weaving them with a skill that must be burned into his genes. His thoughts buzzed as the last bit of color faded, and the world was nothing but white fog and deconstructed consciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> Isofish: I want to preface this with an apology if John's choice of pronouns offends anyone. He frequently uses the same 'it' the English speaking world has traditionally used when referring to an infant of undetermined gender, ("It's a girl/boy," etc.) not an inanimate object. He doesn't mean to be demeaning or offensive, but he legitimately doesn't know any better, and the hivemind has no reason to correct him because it barely considers grubs to be sentient. The abandoned grub in the "[[S][A6I3] ==>](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=007208)" mini game is referred to as "itself," so my theory is supported by at least one instance in canon, but it in no way reflects either of our personal views on the subject.
> 
> Artwork and graphics for chapter one provided by isoscelesfish. Please expect updates to be sporadic and hellishly slow due to both of our personal situations. I apologize in advance.


End file.
